Reconnect with Creedence

Friday

Jul 23, 2010 at 12:01 AMJul 23, 2010 at 10:14 PM

It took a long time for bass player Stu Cook to find his musical direction. Before he was in the Blue Velvets and the Golliwogs, and way before those two bands morphed into Creedence Clearwater Revival, Cook was a trumpet player, then a pianist, then a guitarist. He and Creedence drummer Doug "Cosmo" Clifford and their bandmates, who make up Creedence Clearwater Revisited, are touring all over the country this summer.

Ed Symkus

It took a long time for bass player Stu Cook to find his musical direction. Before he was in the Blue Velvets and the Golliwogs, and way before those two bands morphed into Creedence Clearwater Revival, Cook was a trumpet player, then a pianist, then a guitarist.

"But I only played the bottom four strings, so the logical progression was to play bass," says Cook, 65, by phone from his home in Austin, Texas. He and Creedence drummer Doug "Cosmo" Clifford and their bandmates, who make up Creedence Clearwater Revisited, are touring all over the country this summer.

Creedence Clearwater Revival was the hottest band in America in the late '60s and early '70s, with nine Top-10 hits, and three albums released in their busiest year, 1969.

"It was a whirlwind. It was a quiet rocket ride," recalls Cook of what happened when the band finally hit. "We knew each other since junior high school, and we had been recording for years as the Golliwogs, and getting some minor success.

"We would find work over the years in places like Lodi," he adds, laughing at his reference to the depressing Creedence song about a struggling musician.

Then "Suzie Q" hit the charts, then "Proud Mary," then "Bad Moon Rising." The band was prepared for it musically, but not emotionally.

"It's such a fragile business," says Cook. "Nobody wants to talk to you till suddenly the phone won't stop ringing. You're on the out till you're on the in, and it was like someone threw a switch. You try to hang on, but things are happening so fast. You can quickly get unconnected. You start to believe that you're who they tell you you are. And that's a duality that's very difficult to keep grounded in."

Inevitably, there were arguments about the direction of the band between singer-guitarist-songwriter John Fogerty and everyone else. They split up in 1972, yet their music became a staple of classic rock radio, and their songs became the darlings of film soundtracks, including "Twilight Zone: The Movie," "Forrest Gump" and "The Big Lebowski."

"Whenever you're on a soundtrack it helps to sell the whole catalogue," says Cook. "In 'The Big Lebowski,' starring Jeff Bridges, Creedence was even written into the script. When the Dude's car in stolen, he reports that there's a Creedence tape in it."

After the Creedence members went their separate ways, Cook went on to play in other bands including Southern Pacific and Jackdawg. But he always stayed in touch with Clifford.

"I'd been living in Los Angeles, and finally had enough of it," he recalls. "Cosmo had been living at Lake Tahoe, and invited my family for a vacation, and I moved my family up there in 1994. Then we started hanging out together, and the Creedence Clearwater Revisited project evolved out of hanging out and days of jamming."

Cook and Clifford had no trouble rekindling the great feel of the Creedence rhythm section. By 1995, they found some other musicians, including Cars guitarist Elliott Easton and singer John Tristao -- who sounds remarkably like John Fogerty.

"We intended to only play private shows, like corporate parties, but the first work we were able to get was public concerts," says Cook. "What amazed us was that there was a roomful of kids. Are these people lost? How do they know about Creedence? There were plenty of older fans, but we were aware right away that we had young fans, too."

Cook knew from the start that the formula would be all Creedence tunes, all night.

"It's a winning catalogue," he explains. "Creedence has great songs. Fogerty wrote great material for the band, and the band made fairly uncomplicated recordings. It was described to me once as a roar with a backbeat and a vocal."

There was some thought of trying out new material, but the decision always came back to what Cook calls the premise of the project: to honor and celebrate the music of the quartet.

"To add anything to that catalogue would just create confusion and dilute a great thing," he says. "There's just no reason to mess with the legacy."

So is it strange for Cook to be back out on the road at the age of 65?

"I feel like I'm on the senior rock tour," he says, again laughing. "We spend about 140 days a year away from home. But we get to play music! I go to the gym every day and I try to eat right and get some rest. And when the band's not traveling, my wife and I like to travel."

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